Team Fortress Tuesday #6

For this week's edition, I'd like to talk about getting better at TF2.  If you have any amount of self-motivation, you'll want to get better at everything you do, and I'm of the opinion that video games should be no different.  When I started off, I had no idea what I was doing.  The fun for  me was in learning the game, learning how to play every class, and how to play them well.  That novelty lasted me about six months.  After that point, I basically had all the mechanics down, I could pretty much do everything that was required of me to be a valuable team member on any pub server I joined.  However, even after one gets a hang of the basics, Team Fortress 2 is a very complex game, and if one wants to actually stand out, there is a lot that one needs to learn beyond mere basics.  It's not enough to learn how to rocket jump, you have to learn how to control your jumps, actually, airstrafing in general is a massively useful skill to learn, but it isn't a skill you see your typical noob learning.  The art of prediction is invaluable, the ability to completely control an enemy so you don't have to get down and dirty is great because one fight doesn't leave you crippled and looking for a Medic.  However, the most important thing that time will teach you is gamesense.  Granted, prediction is related to gamesense, but prediction is just a part of overall gamesense.  Prediction, map knowledge, knowledge of other class mechanics, all these things are part of gamesense, and if you have it, you can get away with not being so good at the whole deathmatching thing.